Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy” has arrived at Cannes, and it’s receiving quite a reception. With stars like Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey and Macy Gray, it was always going to get attention. But critics are having a field day with the movie’s pulpy content. Our Cannes review of the film is here, and Indiewire reports on responses to its early screening for buyers. Below, we’ve turned the glorious words of Indiewire, ThePlaylist, Variety, THR, Pajiba, The Guardian and The Telegraph’s reviews into a poem. Enjoy…
THE PAPERBOY
Swampy, Southern, sweaty, socially divided and sex-mad summer
overstuffed
laughable images
a dead porcupine, bloated with rot in the sun
you cannot spoil what’s already rancid
Efron
working his abs
sweaty and luxuriant
A dead possum
for symbolism, and stuff
Lurid, florid, humid, flaccid and insipid
Down and dirty
grungy exploitation melodrama
appealingly rough and rasty texture
a tale of murder, idealistic journalism, warped sexual desires
gloriously grubby
Efron
risibly overheated
Southern pulp trash
sticky, sweaty atmosphere of delirium and sexual frustration
only partly excuses
the woozy ineptitude
In the summer of ’69
An aging sexpot with a prison fetish
A vision in hot-pink lipstick
deliciously tacky
a woman of strange, even telekinetic talents
Crazy Southern gothic
bathed in blood, sweat, urine, mud and crocodile guts
possessed by the spirits
of blaxploitation
and “Baywatch”
Serious commitment to outright silliness
A hypersexualized cartoon
stench will always linger
on the filmographies of everyone involved
Craptastic work of
self-importance.
A heady, humid swamp fever rises
gripping, scary and queasily funny picture
a dark threat which lurks like one of its gators just below the surface
A blowsy, sexy and very unstable woman
a romantic
sheer auto-erotic potency of that sweaty, dangerous criminal
Efron
the sad, motherless boy
a haggard old dog
morally questionable and smug
a dud through and through
summer so hot that
Efron
must walk around
in tiny white briefs
gay interracial BDSM sex
results in the loss of an eye, Nicole Kidman peeing on Efron’s face
You leave the cinema
feeling almost overwhelmed
by the badness.
Efron
filmed adoringly
kitted out in the manner of a gay 70s pornstar
Strictly without merit
a laughable potboiler
sorry, limp, bedraggled mess
so bad it’s bad
Transcendentally awful
In the grand scheme
of dogs’ dinners
The Paperboy is a ten course canine tasting menu
with wine pairings.
Accidentally bad or deliberately camp
To find favour only amongst
connoisseurs of tat
Steams straight past authenticity
into the realms of bad pastiche
“If anyone is going to piss on that boy,
it’s going to be me.”
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
